But most improvements seem inconsequential. In the seven years since Company of Heroes, what should be innovation is instead artifice - things blow up a bit more, and there's snow now.

Later, in a fierce two-on-two winter battle against human opponents (the maximum amount of players you can have in a match is six), we uncovered more problems. You can't scroll out far enough, so your zoomed in view increases the chance of losing track of troops; you can't rotate the map - still; and the rusted brown menu feels outdated and unintuitive, like something out of '90s PC strategy Commandos rather than a product of 2013.

I have been getting the impression the game is more of an ambitious expansion pack than something really meriting a "2" in its title. imho that speaks more to how advanced COH already was in its release year (2006).

Or the writer doesn't quite know what he's doing. This is a multiplayer open beta, not a single player skirmish game. Although AI skirmish is there for people to try.

I pretty much disagree with the vast majority of his criticisms.

I've tested the view distance and it is the same as CoH1 99% of the time, unless the reviewer did something wrong. You can also rotate the view to your leisure, the same way you could in CoH1.

It is definitely a full sequel. It's like saying Starcraft 2 was just an expansion pack to SC1. There are a lot of big and small changes to CoH2 that justify a full sequel.

The cold tech/blizzards that the writer says is contrived has a helluva lot of tactical and strategic nuance that clearly went over his head. I have won and lost games due to excellent or poor planning for an incoming blizzard.

I have done raids on enemy territory on the verge of a blizzard, destroying all the fire pits and preventing his infantry from having any warmth, meanwhile I built extra fire pits in my side of the map, allowing me to launch an all out assault in the middle of a blizzard while his troops froze in the fields trying to counter it.

I've used the drastic sight reduction during blizzards to navigate flanking vehicles around the sides of AT gun killzones to hit enemy lines as soon as the blizzard let up.

I've tracked large troop movements right after a blizzard by their footprints, then redirected my entire army to counter a massive flank movement.

Cold tech is not a contrived feature, it's just another tactical and strategic nuance that players need to learn to use, a nice addition to a genre where so far, no RTS game has really had interesting weather effects.

The graphics are definitely improved from CoH1, and this is just a beta, the final 10% polish doesn't go in until very late in the game, and even then, honestly how much better can graphics really get when you're trying for a level of realism? This isn't Crysis or Doom 3 with its crappy gameplay justified by flashy graphics. It's a strategy game that's making a clear trade off in graphics for more gameplay.

Oh and let's talk about the Skirmish AI which the writer made no mention of. Those of you who like to play against AI and don't do multiplayer will be very satisfied. The AI is challenging and aggressive, a vast improvement over CoH1's AI. It's interesting to fight, pulling off flanking maneuvers and building units appropriately. It still does some weird things, but those can be fixed later. This will be the same AI that will be used in the single-player campaign, so that's a big plus as well.

I think that writer is the type who doesn't even know what he wants, so he's just clamoring for more generic CoH1, and not opening his mind to the subtle and not so subtle changes to the game. Effectively, he writes we wants CoH1, but also wants everything changed?

Iím also in the beta (12 hours of experience so far); some of the writerís statements are blatantly incorrect. The game actually supports 4v4, so 8 players at once.

The zoom level is also perfectly fine in my opinion. There is a world zoom option that defaults to 133% for me for whatever reason. I turned that off, maybe he did not.

The game IS overwhelming. You will be at least three games in before you have any idea what youíre doing. Even now there are some things that I donít know how they work or which unit is better in a situation but that is standard for any Relic RTS.

Some legitimate complaints:

Vehicle pathing is terrible. This was bad in DoW2 but they somehow made it worse here. This is supposed to be addressed in an upcoming patch.

Weather is interesting but itís not quite right yet. Part of the problem is caused by other problems in the game (See pathing is terrible). In one game I played I had my tank roll over my fire pit going backwards instead of heading forwards like I had asked. As a result my infantry started to freeze to death because I couldnít rebuild it. There are talks about adding other sources of heat, like use a Flamer to light a tree (or tank) on fire for warmth until it burns out.

Weather is interesting but itís not quite right yet. Part of the problem is caused by other problems in the game (See pathing is terrible). In one game I played I had my tank roll over my fire pit going backwards instead of heading forwards like I had asked. As a result my infantry started to freeze to death because I couldnít rebuild it. There are talks about adding other sources of heat, like use a Flamer to light a tree (or tank) on fire for warmth until it burns out.

This makes weather sound more of a hassle rather than adding anything fun to the gameplay. is it?

Weather is interesting but itís not quite right yet. Part of the problem is caused by other problems in the game (See pathing is terrible). In one game I played I had my tank roll over my fire pit going backwards instead of heading forwards like I had asked. As a result my infantry started to freeze to death because I couldnít rebuild it. There are talks about adding other sources of heat, like use a Flamer to light a tree (or tank) on fire for warmth until it burns out.

This makes weather sound more of a hassle rather than adding anything fun to the gameplay. is it?

I actually do like it because it offers some new strategic elements but right now the implementation is a bit clunky. One of my favorite additions in the game is ice over rivers. When frozen, tanks and infantry can drive over it but a well-placed explosive or artillery barrage will collapse the ice and sink the tanks. Iíve taken to planting TNT on ice wherever there is heavy traffic.

That said there are a number of ways they can improve weather, they just need to pick one and carry through with it.

Also, there are summer maps as well as winter so you don't always need to use the same tactics.

played a few automatches vs AI today. I got to see the importance of roads on the winter maps. Saw a german squad try to make their way through waist deep snow to a resource point. They moved slowly and ponderously. Gave my flamethrower engineers time to hurry up the road and take cover before giving them a good roasting. I'm guessing this means we need to pay attention to setting up waypoints lest our squads take the most direct - but slowest path to the target destination.

Logged

A Pew Research Center poll found nearly half of Americans hold the false belief that TARP was passed under President Obama, while only 34 percent know it originated under Bush."Oh yeah?" Bush replied. "50% of the people were wrong."

There's a Soviet Commander that has everything I want. Radio Intercept is the first ability so I can see what they're teching to. After that, you get vehicle self-repair, then T-34/85s, my favorite tank, and the IS-2 which is nice as a dual role heavy tank.

The self-repair ability works even after you ram a another tank with a T-34, so it's nice to get it moving and shooting again after ramming, without having to send engineers in during the middle of combat.

We made an interesting observation last night. Against higher level players you can generally get a good idea of their army composition before the game even starts by looking at the bulletins that they chose. I wonder if that is intentional or an oversight?

Even if you don't like multiplayer, give the AI botmatches a try. They have drastically improved the AI. It's aggressive and reacts to all sorts of situations.

I'd like to hear if it's any fun in co-op vs. AI (I assume that's an available mode?). I didn't get much into COH MP over the years pvp cause well, I suck. Micro-managing was never my forte, and other players inevitably had everything up and running faster than I did. Same in just about any RTS I ever played.

I'd like to hear if it's any fun in co-op vs. AI (I assume that's an available mode?). I didn't get much into COH MP over the years pvp cause well, I suck. Micro-managing was never my forte, and other players inevitably had everything up and running faster than I did. Same in just about any RTS I ever played.

It is, comp stomps are more fun. You can set an AI to an easier difficulty against you.

Also, there's two big co-op missions available in the Theater of War mode. And the promise of more content available (for money) later.

So today is my birthday and my brother said there will be a package delivered today. I'm thinking cool it's Company of Heroes 2! Had today off. Waited all day for it to finally be delivered. Opened up the package and what do I get. Keeping up with the Kardashians Season 1 as a gag gift. GRRRR LET DOWN

So today is my birthday and my brother said there will be a package delivered today. I'm thinking cool it's Company of Heroes 2! Had today off. Waited all day for it to finally be delivered. Opened up the package and what do I get. Keeping up with the Kardashians Season 1 as a gag gift. GRRRR LET DOWN

I don't know him, but right now I am sending a mental high five to your brother

Logged

Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

While I still think itís pretty good itís not quite up to the standards of the campaign from Dawn of War II. At times they get carried away with trying to portray the negative aspects of soviet command to the point that it leaves reality and becomes a parody of itself. I get what they are trying to do but itís a bit heavy handed for my taste.

I also tried some co-op theater of war missions. It can be fun but not quite what I was expecting. It makes me think of the RTS equivalent of a horde mode. We only tried the first so the others might be different.

I loathe fighting the AI. In a team game against real opponents we can be winning heavily but if we break one of their spirits enough that they quit and the AI takes over it becomes almost impossible to win. The AI is just too efficient once it gets enough units in play. Itís able to win by attrition by just capping the map and throwing units at you.

Speaking as a big fan of the original Company of Heroes, I have to say I'm pretty baffled by how the sequel has been handled. I mean, I haven't played CoH 2 for myself, but this Quick Look by the ever-diligent Brad Shoemaker makes it seem awful.

First of all, this game isn't a good RTS game like StarCraft II or DOTA at all. In those games, units appear one at a time and do a set amount of damage per second. That's way better than in CoH2 where ordering a squad of conscripts makes like six dudes who behave like some kind of squad that gets better with experience.

Also, why is it so slow? Guys take forever to get anywhere, and if you order them to cross an open field in front of a machine gun emplacement, they all drop to the ground and try to get into cover! Brad had to *constantly* keep clicking his men out into indefensible spaces any time they came under heavy fire.

He also demonstrated how terrible the campaign is about holding your hand through every little thing. For example, one objective in the second mission was to equip some engineers with flame throwers and burn down several buildings. Brad tried everything -- ordering conscripts out of cover, clicking on random parts of the interface, zooming in on the wrong side of the map, and even doing nothing at all for several minutes -- but the game refused to continue until he completed the objective.

It also seems nearly impossible to figure out what you're supposed to do. Aside from having characters audibly tell you your objectives, marking the objectives in the on-screen Objective list, placing flashing red arrows in the game world showing exactly where to go, and highlighting critical interface buttons with flashing yellow indicators, there's effectively no indication of where to go or what to do.

And what's up with the lousy community? Do CoH 2 players really get fed up and quit when their teammates spend an entire match farting around and marching their own units into certain death? Seems like a pretty unfriendly bunch -- they should really strive to be more like the DOTA community!

I was starting to feel pretty tempted by Company of Heroes 2 heading into this long holiday weekend. Thank goodness Professional Game Critic Brad Shoemaker was able to share his exhaustive insight into why this game is such a frustrating waste of time!